The Secret Place (Dublin Murder Squad, #5)(73)

No Houlihan this time. Conway was trusting me to protect her. Had to be a good sign.

The room was big, airy. Four beds, bright-coloured duvet covers. Smell of heated hair and four clashing body sprays thickening the air. Posters of thrusting girl singers and smooth guys I half-recognised, all of them with full lips and hair that had taken three people an hour. Bedside lockers half open, bits of uniform tossed on beds, on the floor: when the screaming started, Orla and Joanne and Gemma had been changing into their civvies, getting ready to do whatever they did with their bite of freedom before teatime.

The scattered clothes gave me that shove again, stronger: Out. No good reason, no bras on show or anything, but I still felt like a pervert, like I’d walked in on the four of them changing and wasn’t walking back out.

‘Nice,’ Conway said, glancing around. ‘Nicer than we had in training, am I right?’

‘Nicer than I’ve got now,’ I said. Only a bit true. I like my place: little apartment, half-empty still because I’d rather save for one good thing than buy four crap ones straightaway. But the high ceiling, the rose moulding, the light and green space opening wide outside the window: I can’t save for those. My place looks straight into a matching apartment block, too close for any light to squeeze in between.

Nothing said whose bit of room was whose; it all looked the same. The only clue was the photos on the bedside lockers. Alison had a little brother, Orla had a bunch of lumpy big sisters. Gemma rode horses. Joanne’s ma was the image of her, a few fillers on.

‘Um,’ Orla said, hovering by the door. She’d swapped her uniform for a light-pink hoodie and pink jeans shorts over tights, looked like a marshmallow on a stick. ‘Is Alison OK?’

We looked at each other, me and Conway. Shrugged.

I said, ‘Could take a while. After that.’

‘But . . . I mean, Miss McKenna said? Like, she just needed her allergy pills?’

Another look at each other. Orla trying to watch both of us at once.

Conway said, ‘I reckon Alison knows what she saw better than McKenna does.’

Orla gawped. ‘You believe in ghosts?’ Not what she’d expected; not what she’d been looking for.

‘Who said anything about believing?’ Conway flipped a magazine off Gemma’s bedside locker, checked out celebs. ‘Nah. We don’t believe. We know.’ To me: ‘Remember the O’Farrell case?’

I’d never heard of the O’Farrell case. But I knew, it slid from Conway to me like a note passed in class, what she was at. She wanted Orla scared.

I shot her a wide-eyed warning grimace, shook my head.

‘What? The O’Farrell case, me and Detective Moran worked that one together. The guy, right, he used to beat the shite out of his wife—’

‘Conway.’ I jerked my chin at Orla.

‘What?’

‘She’s just a kid.’

Conway tossed the magazine onto Alison’s bed. ‘Bollix. You just a kid?’

‘Huh?’ Orla caught up. ‘Um, no?’

‘See?’ Conway said to me. ‘So. One day O’Farrell’s giving the wife the slaps, her little dog goes for him – trying to protect its mistress, yeah? The guy throws it out of the room, goes back to what he’s doing—’

I did an exasperated sigh, rubbed my hair into a mess. Started cruising round the room, see what I could see. Handful of tissues in the bin, smudged that weird orangey-pink that doesn’t exist outside makeup. A bust Biro. No scraps of book.

‘But the dog’s scrabbling at the door, whining, barking, O’Farrell can’t concentrate. He opens the door, grabs the dog, smashes its brains out on the wall. Then he finishes off the wife.’

‘OhmyGod. Ew.’

Gemma’s phone was on her bedside locker, Alison’s was on her bed. I couldn’t see the other two, but Joanne’s locker was an inch open. ‘OK if I have a look around?’ I asked Orla. Not a proper search, that could wait; just having a look-see, and unsettling her a little extra while I was at it.

‘Um, do you . . . ? Like, do you have to?’ She fumbled for a way to say no, but my hand was halfway to the locker door and her mind was halfway on Conway’s fairy tale. ‘I guess it’s OK. I mean—’

‘Thanks.’ Not that I needed her permission; just staying the good cop. Cheerful smile, I gave her, and straight in. Orla opened her mouth to take it back, but Conway was moving in closer.

‘We show up’ – Conway gestured at the two of us – ‘O’Farrell swears it was a burglar. He was good; we nearly fell for it. But then we sit him down in his kitchen, start asking questions. Every time O’Farrell gives us some crap about his imaginary burglar, or about how much he loved his wife, there’s this weird noise outside the door.’

Joanne’s bedside locker: hair straightener, makeup, fake tan, iPod, jewellery box. No books, old or new; no phone. Had to be on her.

‘This noise, it’s like . . .’ Conway raked her nails down the wall by Orla’s head, sudden and violent. Orla jumped. ‘It’s exactly like a dog clawing at the door. And it’s making O’Farrell jumpy as hell. Every time he hears it, he whips round, loses his train of thought; he’s looking at us like, Did yous hear that?’

‘Sweating,’ I said, ‘dripping. White. Looked like he was gonna puke.’